The thing that puzzles me is, (the whole case lol) if there was an intruder then he must have been going there for 2 reasons. Firstly to break in and steel or secondly to harm someone. If you were going to burgle someones house surely you would want to make sure that no one is home. Why would you try and burgle a house that you can see has a tv on if you look through the window? Secondly, if you are going to cause harm to someone, wouldn't you take your weapon of choice with you? I would imagine that it has been methodically planned down to the last detail. (Unless you are completly insane and just decide you are going to break into someones house and kill whoever is there using what ever you can find). I know you often see in movies the killer picking up a knife in a kitchen wearing black gloves and then goes on to murder whoever is in the house, but I would imagine this is very rare in the real world.
From the other point of view, maybe Darcie was in extreme shock. Who knows how we would act if we were in that situation. I think I would have passed out due to fright and shock to be honest.
The mysterious "intruder" obviously was not a burglar. The moment a burglar realized someone was home they would have ran for an exit with the intention of hiding his/her face.
You're correct. Burglars want to get in, get the stuff and get out without being detected. No real burglar is going to grab a kitchen knife and try to kill 3 people, then run past a wallet and jewelry. It only happens in really bad movies.
Very few real burglars would enter a house they know to be occupied. Since Mom and her two boys were in the living room with lights on, all he had to do was peek through the curtains.
The only murders that happen using weapons that are in the home are usually crimes of passion, the spontaneous ones. The vast majority of those are perpetrated by someone known to the victim. Killers don't go into a house to kill someone and hope they can find a weapon inside. There are very rare cases of this, like Richard Speck, but "very rare" is the operative phrase.
The "shock" that happens to attack victims doesn't usually kick in until after the attack is over. During the attack, the body is in flight or fight stage. All the mental processes are hyper-engaged so as to beat off the attacker. The frontal cortex (cognitic thought/logic) shuts down a bit and the limbic brain (survival instinct) takes over. Our memory centers are located closer to the limbic brain than the f. cortex.
It is virtually impossible that she remembered all those details but not the attacker's face. Sometimes when cops interview knife-mugging victims they dont' get a lot of detail about the mugger's face because the victim is so visually focused on the knife, where it is, which direction is it going, etc. How long would a knife-mugging take? 10 seconds? 20, tops?
If someone is kneeling on top of you for a minute or so slicing at you with a knife and you're struggling with them, at some point you're going to glance at the attacker's eyes and face to quickly determine what their intent is. Sure, you'll be focused on the knife, but human instinct would also drive you to look at their face, at least for a few short seconds (and more than once). The image of that person's face and expression gets immediately and permanently burned into the limbic memory centers of your brain. It's a well-known and documented physical response to trauma. It's the very moment when your brain wouldn't go into black out stage.
Her saying the only thing she doesn't remember is her being attacked is total BS and contrary to everything we know about attack trauma.
If she forgot anything, it would be more the time period after she was being attacked, like her chasing him out or the 911 call time.
